The Coast Guard is increasing its presence in the Caribbean in an attempt to forestall a potential COVID-19-inspired surge in illegal migration and human smuggling from the region.

Australian National Audit Office evidence to Senate appears to contradict Morrison’s claim that he provided no authorisation

The prime minister’s office asked Bridget McKenzie to seek Scott Morrison’s “authority” for intended recipients of $100m of sports grants and coordinate the announcement with Coalition campaign headquarters, according to new evidence to the sports rorts inquiry.

The evidence from the Australian National Audit Office to the Senate inquiry contradicts Morrison’s claims that McKenzie, the former sports minister, was the ultimate decision-maker for the grant program, and that changes were not made after parliament was dissolved.

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The authors explain why COVID-19 presents a greater burden for immigrant communities and this article advocates for a more equitable health care system.

Labor argues fresh details of emails between the offices of Scott Morrison and now-former cabinet minister Bridget McKenzie show the Prime Minister had personal involvement in approving a list of successful clubs under the much maligned community sports grants scheme.

The Federal Opposition Leader accuses Scott Morrison of misleading Federal Parliament over the sports rorts saga, saying Bridget McKenzie was made a "scapegoat" over the affair.

Jobless international hospitality workers deemed ineligible for the Federal Government's JobKeeper and JobSeeker programs are "heartbroken" at their treatment and turning to restaurants providing free meals during the coronavirus pandemic.

More than two months after the first case of COVID-19 appeared in a small town outside Milan, Italy prepares a staged end to Europe's longest coronavirus lockdown.

A ban on single-use plastics including cutlery and straws will be pushed back in SA to allow restaurants and cafes to reopen "sooner rather than later" amid the coronavirus pandemic.

With dine-in service off the table many restaurants struggle to retain staff who are ineligible for JobKeeper payments.

Norfolk Island is the only place in Australia you can dine in a cafe and gather outdoors with 50 people.

Former Cabinet minister Bridget McKenzie defends her actions in the sports grants scandal, saying it was her "responsibility" to exercise discretion and allocate grants to projects that had not been merit-listed.

Texas reopens restaurants, Utah reopens salons. As several states lift coronavirus restrictions, many warn of a second wave if social distancing ends too soon.

U.S. deportation flights to Guatemala resume -- with promises of testing for coronavirus

As had been widely expected, Gilead Sciences on Thursday announced that the Japanese Ministry of Health,…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Saturday approved emergency use authorization (EUA) to Quidel Corp for the first COVID-19 antigen test.

The Department is making grant funding available for public education programs concerning immigration-related employment discrimination. The Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC), a section of the Department’s Civil Rights Division, announced the availability of funds for public education programs regarding employees’ rights and employers’ obligations under the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder today announced that more than $424 million in Recovery Act funds will go to 20 states, territories and the District of Columbia to maintain or increase public safety, while creating or retaining jobs within the law enforcement community.

Attorney General Eric Holder today announced more than $8.7 million in Recovery Act funds for three communities in California to use in fighting crime and drug trafficking as part of the Justice Department’s Southwest Border Strategy.

The Department today awarded $723,000 in grants to twelve groups serving communities throughout the country.

The Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices today announced grant funding available for public education programs that provide workers or employers with information about immigration-related employment discrimination under the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

An indictment unsealed today in Philadelphia charged Omelyan Botsvynyuk, Stepan Botsvynyuk, Mykhaylo Botsvynyuk, Dmytro Botsvynyuk, and Yaroslav Botsvynyuk, a/k/a Yaroslav Churuk, with extortion and conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for their alleged involvement in a human trafficking operation.

The Department of Justice announced today $298 million in grants to fund the hiring and retaining of 1,388 state, local and tribal law enforcement officers by 379 police and sheriffs departments in 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

The Justice Department today announced that it has awarded $720,321 in grants to 13 organizations throughout the country to conduct public education programs for workers and employers about federal protections against immigration-related job discrimination.

Today President Barack Obama granted pardons to nine individuals.

The U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) announced $6.9 million in awards to 23 projects in the Engaging Men in Preventing Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence, Dating Violence and Stalking Grant Program.

Today President Barack Obama granted pardons to eight individuals.

Today President Barack Obama granted pardons to five individuals and commutation of sentence to one individual.

The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) today announced funding awards to over 220 cities and counties, aimed at creating or saving approximately 800 law enforcement positions. The grants will fund over 600 new law enforcement positions and save an additional 200 positions recently lost or in jeopardy of being cut due to local budget cuts.

Attorney General Eric Holder, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod Rosenstein, and Bureau of Justice Assistance Deputy Director, Kristen Mahoney, today announced more than $2.4 million in grants to 13 jurisdictions to combat the purchase and sale of counterfeit and pirated products. Intellectual Property theft refers to the violation of criminal laws that protect copyrights, patents, trademarks, other forms of intellectual property and trade secrets, both in the United States and abroad.

The Departments of Justice and Labor today announced the availability of approximately $32 million through two grant competitions that will offer job training, education and support services to formerly incarcerated youths and women.

The Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) today announced $12.6 million dollars in grants awarded to 20 communities as part of a new, consolidated program designed to more effectively reduce dating violence.

Today President Barack Obama granted pardons to the following seventeen individuals.

Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder today announced grants to 12 programs across the country to target the urgent need to reduce domestic violence homicides.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today $1.8 million in new resources to improve access to criminal legal services and strengthen indigent defense across the nation.

The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) today announced funding awards to 263 cities and counties, aimed at creating 937 law enforcement positions. More than $125 million will be awarded nationally, including nearly $45 million to fund 356 new school resource officer positions.

Today President Barack Obama granted clemency to 21 individuals, consisting of eight commutations and 13 pardons.

Today, President Barack Obama granted clemency to Ceasar Huerta Cantu.

The Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women announced the release of two grant solicitations to launch a new $3 million special initiative for the Bakken Region.

A California man pleaded guilty today in the District of Massachusetts for his role in a conspiracy to hack into the computerized cash registers of a number of Subway restaurants to fraudulently obtain more than $40,000 in gift cards.

Four businessmen involved in the development, operation and ownership of restaurants, including Cadillac Ranch restaurants, in Ohio and elsewhere in the United States, pleaded guilty today to tax charges, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service announced.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole announced today that the Justice Department will implement a series of steps to help address the influx of migrants crossing the southern border of the United States. These include refocusing immigration court resources to adjudicate the cases of recent migrants; providing support and training to help address violence in Central America; and redoubling efforts to work with other federal agencies and the Mexican government to investigate and prosecute those who smuggle migrants to the United States

Associate Attorney General Tony West today announced $3 million dollars in grants from the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) to increase local and tribal capacity to prosecute crimes of violence against women and provide services to victims of sexual assault, domestic violence and stalking in the Bakken Region of North Dakota and Montana

The Justice Department announced today the filing of a lawsuit with the Executive Office for Immigration Review against Louisiana Crane Company LLC (Louisiana Crane), which is headquartered in Eunice, Louisiana.

The Department of Justice and the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), which administers AmeriCorps national service programs, has awarded $1.8 million in grants to increase the effective and efficient adjudication of immigration proceedings involving certain children who have crossed the U.S. border without a parent or legal guardian.

by Alice Wilder, WNYC

Presidential lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has largely fallen out of the public eye since his starring role in President Donald Trump’s impeachment. But Giuliani hasn’t gone silent.

Instead, he’s in his home, doing a call-in radio show and a podcast — “Common Sense” — during which he has repeatedly gone on bigoted rants about China and its government.

“They have no morals,” he said on his April 28 radio show. “They’re amoral in the sense that human life means something in Western civilization, it means a lot. Human life doesn’t mean the same thing to them.”

Giuliani has also speculated that the spread of the coronavirus may be a plot by the Chinese government.

For example, Giuliani has raised the possibility that China purposely released the virus from a biological lab in Wuhan. “We have to say accidentally,” Giuliani said in a recent radio broadcast. “But I don’t think as responsible investigators we can rule out that it wasn’t done deliberately.”

Experts say there’s no public evidence the virus came from the lab. Amid a reported White House push, U.S. intelligence agencies have said they are investigating the origins of the virus.

Giuliani is also fixated on the idea that the Chinese government sent sick people overseas. In an April 27 episode of his podcast, he said that China allowed “over a million people from Wuhan travel to us, to the United States, to England to France to Italy to Germany.” He added, “I hope the people there have the same reaction we have to the value of human life and the loss of human life.”

“When they found out about this terrible virus that escaped, assuming they didn’t do it on purpose,” Giuliani said a day later on his radio show, “they were going to make sure the West suffered as much if not more than they did and jumped on top of an opportunity, it’s not a big assumption to make. And there isn’t a contrary explanation.”

The New York Times found that thousands, not millions, of people flew internationally out of Wuhan.

Asked about his comments, Giuliani did not respond.

The comments by Giuliani have come as discrimination against Asian Americans has spiked. And they reinforce the White House’s emerging push to blame China for the pandemic.

Giuliani has said he’s spoken to the president a number of times about the coronavirus. Two days after Giuliani said he was sure the virus came from the Wuhan lab, Trump said he has evidence of the same. (The president declined to give the evidence, saying it’s secret.)

Giuliani appears to have found a receptive wider audience too. An advertising executive at 77 WABC, which airs Giuliani’s radio show, said “feedback has been amazing” and online listening has “skyrocketed.”

The station’s parent company, Red Apple Media, did not respond to a request for comment.

In an April 23 radio show, Giuliani interviewed Gordon Chang, a conservative pundit who frequently predicts the collapse of the Chinese government. Chang said if China released the virus accidentally — for which, again, there’s no evidence — it then decided to create a global pandemic. “I think what Xi Jinping did was he decided he was going to spread the virus so that he would level the playing field so that China would not be in such a hole,” Chang said, referring to China’s president.

“Wow,” Giuliani responded. “So he saw an opportunity, if that theory is correct, and it wasn’t a bioweapon to start with, he saw an opportunity that was sort of accidentally presented to him, and then he took advantage of it. It was opportunistic.”

Chang acknowledged, “We can’t know what was in Xi Jinping’s mind for sure.” But then he went on, “It looks more like they were deliberate and malicious and that means Mr. Mayor ... this is a crime against all of humanity.”

Giuliani ended the interview by inviting Chang to be a guest on his other show, the podcast.

Giuliani has also said he’d use his access to help guests on his show move ahead with exploratory treatments. Talking with one pharmaceutical executive on his show in late March, Giuliani told his guest, “I’ll use whatever my yelling and screaming can do to do it faster, to help you.”

As the Times reported, the executive’s company received initial trial approval from the Food and Drug Administration soon after. (The FDA has said the application was subject to “internal scientific review.” And Giuliani has said he has no business connection to the company.)

“I don’t lobby the government,” Giuliani emailed in response to a request for comment. “I do hope, however, that they and others are successful.”

Giuliani appears to have strong feelings about the government’s process for approving drugs.

In an April 23 broadcast, Mark, a pharmacist from New Jersey, called in to report on his “informal study” of the patients who have used a drug cocktail that includes hydroxychloroquine — the anti-malaria drug that Trump long has touted.

Giuliani was excited when Mark reported that none of his patients had been hospitalized: “Why doesn’t this count with all these geniuses in Washington? The double blind study and the triple blind study and this study and that study, we don’t have time for that, we’ve got to go to people like Mark in New Jersey!”

In fact, the FDA has warned against widespread use of the drug, noting that it can cause heart problems.

The discussions with his listeners, though, often come back to China.

One caller to Giuliani’s radio show, identifying himself as “George from Bay Ridge,” went on a rant against Chinese people, likening them to serial killers with “no conscience” who are attempting to take over businesses all over the world.

Giuliani responded, “George, I’ve been getting complaints about this for a long time.” He added: “It almost reminds me of the Mafia. You know, they say, if you do business with America it’s one thing. If you do business with China you don’t realize, all of a sudden you start owing them too much and they believe they own you.”

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A federal judge found that the uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic was good cause for the delay.